the New Life'; and in the treatment of these subjects,
and especially in his sketches of character and critical essays upon the
literature of his day, Desjardins's originality resolves itself more and
more clearly into spirituality of thought, expressed in an incorruptible
simplicity of style. To quote from Madame de Bury again:--"One of the
chief characteristics of Paul Desjardins's utterances is their total
disinterestedness, their absolute detachment from self. Nowhere else
have you the same indescribable purity, the same boundless generosity of
joy in others' good, the same pervading altruism."

These writings were the expression of a mind on a journey, a quest,--not
of any one definite mind, for so completely has the personality of the
author been subdued to his mission, that his mind seems typical of the
general mind of young France in quest of spirituality, his individuality
a common one to all participants in the new movement, as it is called.

In 1892 the boldest effort of Desjardins's,--a small pamphlet, 'The
Present Duty,'--appeared. It created a sensation in the thinking world
of Paris. It marked a definite stage accomplished in the new movement,
and an arrival at one stopping-place at least. While the critics were
still diagnosing over the pamphlet as a theory, a small band of men,
avowing the same convictions as Desjardins, proceeded to test it as a
practical truth. They enrolled themselves into a "Union for Moral
Action," which had for its object to associate together, without regard
to religious or political beliefs, all serious-minded men who cared to
work for the formation of a healthy public opinion, for a moral
awakening, and for the education and strengthening of the modern
decadent or enervated will power. In general, it is common interests,
doctrines, needs, that bring men together in associations. The Union for
Moral Action sought, on the contrary, to associate men of diverse
interests and opinions--adversaries even,--into collaboration for the
common morality. In response to the interpellations, questions, and
doubts evoked by 'The Present Duty,' Desjardins published in the Debats
a series of articles on 'The Conversion of the Church.' They contributed
still more to differentiate him from the other leaders of the new
movement; in fact, few caring to share the responsibility of such
radical utterances, he has been left in literary isolation in his
advanced position: a position which, although it